CRUEL KARLA

Homolka's former cell pal speaks out about love gone wrong

MONTREAL -- Sex killer Karla Homolka had sex at maximum security Ste-Anne-des-Plaines prison with a male inmate she now wants to marry, a former cell pal says.

But Homolka's love affair was put on ice about a year ago after Homolka and her guy were caught fondling each other through a skimpy fence that is the only buffer between male and female cons in the prison yard, said former prison inmate and Homolka confidante, Chantel Meuneer.

Homolka and Meuneer were among a dozen inmates being held in a tiny women's section of the prison.

Meuneer, who had a cell opposite Homolka's for 10 months until her release in April, said she was exercising in the yard one day when she saw Homolka and the man strip down at the fence, fondle each other and exchange underwear.

'SEXUALLY TOUCHING'

"Karla was on the guy. She changed the panties and the bra, and him, he changed the boxer shorts ... they were sexually touching," Meuneer said.

She said Homolka and the convict also knew each other from the prison library.

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) subsequently transferred the man to another prison, she said Homolka told her.

Meuneer also said Homolka told her CSC brass has since refused her bid for a prison wedding and forbids writing between the two.

"She would talk about the love she had for him. She likes him. She wanted to marry him ... (CSC) refused ... she was crying. She has photographs of him on the wall of her cell."

Meuneer thinks the man is serving a life sentence for a brutal murder.

"She is still a sick woman. She likes sick men," said Meuneer, who is now living with Homolka's lesbian ex-girlfriend, Lynda Veronneau.

As reported by The Sunday Sun in March 2000, Veronneau and Homolka were lovers while the two were at Joliette corrections camp in Laval.

While Meuneer's claim cannot be independently corroborated, a National Parole Board (NPB) panel referred vaguely to a secret sexual relationship when it reviewed last Monday an order that has Homolka imprisoned until her full 12-year manslaughter sentence expires in July 2005.

"In reality, you have secretly undertaken an emotional relationship with another inmate, and evidence gathered seems to indicate that this relationship rapidly became sexual," the panel stated.

Noting that Homolka has not taken any programs on her "role as a sexual aggressor" in her crimes, the NPB panel said given her history, there is "every need to be vigilant."

Physical contact between male and female offenders at Ste-Anne-des-Plaines is "impossible," CSC spokesman Michelle Pilon-Santili said. But she said they could exchange notes and other items by hiding them in books in the library and through other means.

She said if contact had happened, there would be a probe and any relationship between a man and woman would be deemed inappropriate and the pair would be separated.

Pilon-Santili said any allegation of male-female sexual contact -- including Meuneer's about Homolka -- will be investigated.

Meuneer said when Homolka and the man were caught having sex, Homolka was still involved in a lesbian relationship with Veronneau, who had been released from Joliette and visited Homolka at Ste-Anne.

Homolka later dumped Veronneau -- but not before Veronneau had spent $3,000 on Victoria's Secret lingerie and a $2,500 computer.

Meuneer said Dec. 6, 2001, only seven days before Homolka dumped Veronneau, she asked Homolka why she kept her lesbian lover hanging on when she was in love with the man.

"'I don't let go right now because I want my clothes and I want my computer,'" Meuneer recalls Homolka saying.

"When she had the clothes she jumped up and down and yelled 'yeh, yeh, yeh!' She was very happy, ecstatic. She put (the lingerie) on, put tape around her (breasts) ... she wanted her (breasts) sticking up. She was prancing around saying, 'Oh it fits me so good.' Seven women watched her. It was all so criminal and crazy. The other women were pissed off."

HEART BROKEN

Veronneau said Homolka broke her heart when she told her their relationship was finished.

"I say ... 'tabernac ... there is not the same attraction as before.' I say to her, 'What is happening with you?' She was like a glass, like ice. She said 'it is finished Lynda ... I don't love you no more.' I say 'I gave you my time, I don't go out, I do anything for you ... are you in love with somebody else?' She told me the truth, she said 'yes.' "

Homolka, 32, who in a 1993 plea bargain cut a controversial deal for a 12-year manslaughter sentence for her part in her then-husband Paul Bernardo's sex slayings of Kristen French, 15, and Leslie Mahaffy, 14, and the drug rape death of her sister, Tammy, 15, has been held at the tiny women's section of Ste. Anne-des-Plaines since the NPB first detained her for her full sentence in March 2001.

In that decision, the NPB cited expert belief that Homolka -- who goes by the name Karla Teale in prison -- might be a psychopath.

"Recently, the diagnostic experts have seen a personality disorder, for example an anti-social personality or psychopathy," the panel stated, reporting on a hearing held in Homolka's voluntary absence. The psychiatric diagnoses were in stark contrast to those done at the time of the plea and prior to her testimony that helped convict Bernardo of two counts of first-degree murder at a 1995 trial.

In Monday's review, the NPB found there was "no significant change" in her case during the past year.

Homolka's detention will be reviewed again February 2004.

But Homolka has told the NPB that she intends to serve her full sentence.